


Between Dawn and Breaking

by shadowycorner



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29320461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowycorner/pseuds/shadowycorner
Summary: "oh girl, you fool, you made a grave mistake, you fell in love with a free thing, you fell in love with a traveller"
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Between Dawn and Breaking

Ginny lay awake since the middle of the night, and now the dawn was creeping in. Her stomach ached from a mixture of wine from last night, mingling with the dread of the rising sun and what the morning would bring, or rather, take away.

Her eyes fell upon a trunk half-packed, big fluffy sweaters and vibrantly coloured jewellery strewn across the floor. A Ravenclaw scarf, a wand, a gifted Weasley sweater with a G on it. Ginny had plenty of those to give. With tired eyes she followed the patterns and pictures painted onto the walls over many years, a story of the room’s inhabitant carved across the ceiling in bright lovely colours.

And Ginny couldn’t imagine this room without her, all the colours of the images dying without her light.

She had to brace herself. She had to be strong. Not make scenes. Smother any drama before it could appear.

The sheets rustled beside her. Ginny turned around to see Luna sleeping, her lips parted. Her breath and the promise of heat between them was the only warmth in the coolness of the room.

Luna curled into a ball. Ginny felt Luna’s knees brush against her side. They were cold. Ginny shifted carefully close, wishing not to wake her and yet hoping she would.

As if Luna had felt the intensity of her stare, she stirred awake.

Ginny felt as if she were pulled in the undertow of a great river. She could barely breathe as she looked upon Luna, whose sleepy eyes lit up with the first rays of the sun pouring in through the windows. A sigh escaped her, tickling Ginny’s skin.

This was their happy place, the bed and the walls around them soaked with memories of their laughter, the kisses, the light in the cold, the many breaths spent, whispers exchanged, all tenderly kept within the sheets.

“Should we get up?” Ginny asked, trying to keep her voice steady. Her body was tense with an urgency to not waste time. Because time was running now. The ship was coming, and there was breakfast to be had, bags to be packed, and goodbyes to be said.

“Nah, let’s stay in bed,” Luna said, snuggling closer to Ginny, her hands resting on Ginny’s neck, fingers gently nestled beneath her jaw.

“But there’s so much to do...”

“Yeah, I suppose there is,” Luna said, leaning in and kissing Ginny softly on the lips. The fear and heartache inside Ginny unfurled and fell away as something else bloomed in its place. A fire of desire gripped her flesh as she rolled on top of Luna and laughed against her face. Maybe time could be frozen for a little while, maybe for one moment longer she could love instead of break.

*

Moments later they lay in bed, hand in hand, and legs all tangled. Freckles blending in with the pale, the sun and the moon of their hair across the pillows. Ginny and Luna, together, one last time.

For a treacherous second, Ginny thought that if goodbyes could be as beautiful as this, then the pain of them was worth it.

Luna slipped out of bed, the warmth of her hand following with. She appeared fine, at peace, as Luna often did, but this morning she didn’t sing under her breath, didn’t shower Ginny with her mad ideas how to spend the day. Perhaps she was also hurting, though sometimes Ginny wasn’t sure if Luna could truly suffer, always finding beauty and grace even in her ache.

Ginny sat up and rubbed her eyes. The cold lapped at her, calling goosebumps to her skin. She had prepared for this. She had practised being silent, biting her tongue; all for the art of letting go. But suddenly, here and now, the idea of not fighting till her last breath seemed impossible bordering on the insane.

“Luna,” she said hoarsely.

Luna’s head poked through a hole in her woolly sweater. Her eyes were a little wider than usual, the emotion swirling the blue a little darker.

“I-I don’t want you to go.”

With her hands, Luna pulled her hair out of the sweater and let them fan over her shoulders. She walked to the bed and sat cross-legged opposite Ginny.

“Gin, you know I can’t stay.”

Ginny bit her lip, feeling stupid for asking her that, for selfishly daring to take her upcoming journey and dream away. Luna was to enter a prestigious program of Conservation of the Magical Species in Muggle Environments. This program was to take her to all corners of the world for the next five years, into both cities and the wild, all places Ginny could apparently not follow.

“Do you remember what I once told you, that first time we really talked?”

Ginny deliberately refused to remember, but the memory rose in front of her mind’s eye vivid and loud. Young Ginny and Luna sitting not far from the Whomping Willow, its beautiful violence suspended calm in the sky. Ginny and her tired heavy heart, the aftermath of the horrors of being possessed by the diary lingering. Tears staining her cheeks but darkness leaving her bones as a kind of lightness settled in.

She had just bared her soul to Luna, this quiet girl who daydreamed all the time and never frowned. For the first time she had let go of it all, and Luna was the only one who listened without flinching. A gift this girl had, Ginny had thought, in how she made people feel safe and willing to open.

And then Ginny had asked, wanting to return the favour, get to know her better: “Do you dream? And are you not afraid when you do?”

“Dreams are when I’m least afraid,” Luna had said. “I dream of boarding a ship one day, and sailing across the ocean, and seeing every landscape there is to see, find all the magical creatures, walk through all the cities my mother has seen.”

A friendship had been born between them on that day. It was joyful and sweet and warm like the sun, until over time, neither of them knowing when and how, it grew into something more.

All those days, both dark and light, flashed through Ginny’s eyes, as people claim their life does before they die. The final death of their romance, playing out, nearing the curtain fall.

As if Luna could see inside her head, the two of them like a memory imprinted in a photograph, she said, “And do you remember what you said to me?”

Somehow, Ginny couldn’t. All she thought of were the things she was losing, things Luna had said to _her_ , all her words as if plucked from the wilderness itself, fearless with their poetry and feeling. Ginny remembered Luna taking a step closer to her for the first time, lips pink and inviting, telling her she was _the hum inside her heart_. Ginny remembered how Luna had held her hand after the Battle of Hogwarts and many nights after, whispering into her shoulders, _you are my tender breath-keeper_. _You give life to my lungs._

_You are my bottled_ _storming wind_ _._

“You said that you dream of flying,” Luna said, “rushing with the winds, laughing with the skies. And now you too can live that dream.”

Ginny had always seen herself as someone that would never beg any man or woman for anything. But Luna was Luna, a being of wonder and beauty unto its own. To lose her would mean to lose something that made her soul bloom in strange and soft ways, of experiencing life upside down, and basking in every minute of it.

“You never asked me to come with you,” she finally managed to say. The words fell out of her like stones, weighing her down days and months and maybe years, because somewhere deep down, she knew Luna would one day leave.

Luna grabbed her hands, held them fast. “Because I know you don’t want to. You have your family, your Quidditch career, all that you love and hold dear is here. Why follow me when here you can soar?”

She was right, and yet how very wrong she was, too.

“I’m not going away forever, you know?” Luna added.

“Not forever,” Ginny snorted, unable to keep the storm inside her at bay. “Yes, and you’ll come back one day, and we’ll meet of course, because we’ll still be _friends_.” She said it as if it was a terrible word, full of hurt. “And we’ll have to just live with the fact that this ended. We’ll live with someone else, love other people, and you think you’ll still be able to look at me and feel like it’s alright? Like nothing ever happened? You’re not just leaving, you’re leaving me.”

“I’m not leaving you, I’m leaving for myself. That’s different.”

Ginny let out a sound between a desperate sigh and a groan. As much as she tried, she didn’t understand the difference. Maybe she didn’t want to.

The silence that hung between them filled all the hollows between her bones. And the clock, it kept on ticking.

“The way I love you, Luna,” Ginny said after a while, voice cracking “I won’t ever love anyone else.”

Luna smiled. It shocked Ginny how even softness could cut.

“You love every person differently, that’s the beauty of life. You should be excited. For all the different kinds of love you will feel.”

There was no mockery in Luna’s words. They were genuine and honest, as was always a habit with her. And yet Ginny had to push down her anger. “Why not you and me? Why not us?”

Luna embraced herself, tilted her head to the side to look out the window. A dream of distance slipped into her blue eyes. “I can’t. I know myself, I know how I feel and how I love. And now, I don’t have more in me than to love the open road, and I know it’d break your heart.”

“ _Break it_ ,” Ginny said immediately, arms in the air, heart in surrender. “It’s yours. Break my heart. What point is there, to having a heart which goes unhurt?”

Ginny wasn’t sure if she had ever seen Luna cry, but now tears were rolling down her cheeks, and suddenly it wasn’t clear who was breaking whose heart. Half-sighing, half-sobbing, Ginny pulled Luna close to her and buried her face into her hair, the nook of her shoulder, feeling Luna’s body melt into hers.

And for the first time, she understood that she had lost her, that she was never hers to keep anyway.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into Luna’s hair, suspended in a place between terrible longing and letting go. “Don’t listen to me.” Sniffling, Ginny pulled away and tried to crack a smile, and somehow, succeeded. “I just couldn’t _not_ fight for you.” 

Luna stared at her and held her breath, features ghost-like, a question in her eyes, a brief hesitation. But here was a girl  with a siren’s call at the root of her heart since she was a child .  A girl who knew l iving was sometimes losing , and love still mattered even when it ended. 

She took Ginny’s face in her hands and kissed her  a  gentl e goodbye .  In that kiss that was to be their last, Ginny felt it all - the weight of  pain becoming light  and  the love  seeping into her skin where it would hum in secret forever. 


End file.
